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Sometimes I wonder how my parents still accept me in their house. Being their child doesn't seem to be a sufficient pretext as I can see in their eyes the regret of having me with them. But I'm still here. I'm 19 years old and no one has kicked me out of the house. I'm still here, all day in my thoughts and all night in my dreams. I'm still here, not bothering anyone and yet I've screwed up so many of their years.
Before me, before what they once called their "biggest mistake," everything was kind of fine for them. As far as I know, it started in high school. My father was in love with a girl in his class and had been for a while. She was beautiful. She was a lot prettier than any girl I ever met on the street. From what I saw, she was a brunette with a smile that would make many people faint and a look that, even on the twenty-year-old polaroid, left its mark on people's minds. She was beautiful and so beautiful that even my mother had offered this girl her heart.
She had merely offered her everything to her. But in secret. She had succumbed and dived more and more to reach the excessively complex depths of love. There was no way out. She had left her heart and all her sanity with it. She had fallen madly in love with her classmate and was ashamed, so ashamed. Having to hide her feelings and her ruddy cheeks from her family, her friends and a whole society had driven her crazy, as I heard her say. It had driven her insane to the point of making the mistake of her life.
When I was a kid and I was listening to their conversations behind the doors, I used to dream of meeting this girl who would turn my head as much as she had returned theirs. Deep down, I didn't understand what a woman and a man married together but in love with the same memory of their teenage years meant. I didn't understand the complexity of their relationship at all, nor did I know the truth behind this illusion of affection.
But well, I think that after me, after all that, they felt obliged to stay together all their lives when neither of them was in love with the other. They were both madly smitten with the same woman who had unintentionally intertwined these two souls. Except that a child born out a marriage... what was it? It was nothing more than a malediction that forced them to get married to look a bit better, a bit less crazy and unhappy in the eyes of their families.
Today people say it's outdated, that a child out of marriage is nothing abnormal, it's just as beautiful as any other situation. But that was another time, another era, another mentality. Anyway, if my family was transposed to another space-time, to another planet or anywhere else, I think I would still be as unwanted as ever.
For a long time, answers to this story were missing, but I didn't dare to ask my mother, fearing it would awaken an umpteenth fury in her. I didn't dare to ask my father either, afraid of seeing his eyes fog up again and again until the storm covered his eyes. So, as a teenager, I would occasionally listen to the few words that came through the walls. I would look at the old pictures hidden in the shoebox under the bed. And I would also start thinking that what I heard as a child, when my parents still spoke openly in front of me without worrying about me being able to understand it, was not really ordinary. And it was a mystery that I wanted to unravel.
For a long time, I was missing the pieces of the puzzle to understand how my parents felt about this gorgeous girl with crimson lips and raven hair. And then, one day, there was this lemon boy and I think I started to get it.
One day there was Hyunjin. And from that day on, I discovered feelings that were strangely similar to love. From there I understood many things that have been missing in my life.